Battle For Life

Guido Sterkendries

Photographer

Guido Sterkendries is an eco-explorer and photographer who has travelled extensively around the Amazon. He captures his vision of Amazonia and the diversity of colours, shapes and sizes with low light lenses, leaving no stone unturned in his quest to record the region’s diversity. His remarkable expeditions have earned him a well-deserved reputation as one of the world’s most committed and indefatigable photographers with an eye for purity. An approach that is completely in sync with the vision and the needs of the natives of South America and their habitat.

But Sterkendries felt that instead of limiting himself to merely producing outstanding natural imagery he should also take a critical look at the ecological, economic and cultural problems that Amazonia currently faces. He is passionate about the green lungs of our planet and feels that it is his mission to challenge the myopic short-term responses of politicians around the world to a changing climate and its rapidly shrinking biodiversity. According to Sterkendries we can bring about a change together. Guido is considered a ground-breaking independent voice, sharing his vision and that of the Amazonian Indians of a dominant Western world in his confrontational, innovative and unique project, called “Battle for Life”.

Guido Sterkendries

Guido Sterkendries is an eco-explorer and photographer who has travelled extensively around the Amazon. He captures his vision of Amazonia and the diversity of colours, shapes and sizes with low light lenses, leaving no stone unturned in his quest to record the region’s diversity. His remarkable expeditions have earned him a well-deserved reputation as one of the world’s most committed and indefatigable photographers with an eye for purity. An approach that is completely in sync with the vision and the needs of the natives of South America and their habitat.

But Sterkendries felt that instead of limiting himself to merely producing outstanding natural imagery he should also take a critical look at the ecological, economic and cultural problems that Amazonia currently faces. He is passionate about the green lungs of our planet and feels that it is his mission to challenge the myopic short-term responses of politicians around the world to a changing climate and its rapidly shrinking biodiversity. According to Sterkendries we can bring about a change together. Guido is considered a ground-breaking independent voice, sharing his vision and that of the Amazonian Indians of a dominant Western world in his confrontational, innovative and unique project, called “Battle for Life”.

Sterkendries’s stunning pictures of Amazonia’s incomparable and fragile purity are regularly featured in BBC Wildlife Magazine, Terre Sauvage, GEO LINO and a host of other publications. Sterkendries goes to extreme lengths, risking life and limb, often in the most unforgiving seasons, to share this purity with us. The result is a series of astonishing close-ups of very beautiful albeit sometimes also very dangerous creatures. His Battle for Life projects are an ode to the ongoing evolution and a plea in favour of the conservation of this valuable, extraordinarily rich, but terribly endangered ecosystem.

PURE GOLD

PURE GOLD

Last documented testament in the Wild

PURE GOLD

In Pure Gold, Belgian photographer Guido Sterkendries
clashes swords with the disinformation about the current
and disastrous destruction of the tropical rainforests and
their unique amphibian inhabitants. He portrays these
creatures in his photographs and, where it is needed, uses
words to explain further. According to Sterkendries, mankind
is soon going to be forced into finding a better balance
precisely because of our so-called ‘modern lifestyle’.
That is, if we want to leave our children and grandchildren
a living heritage. There is certainly hope, thanks to an ever-
louder appeal for a greater focus on sustainability.
In his work he wants to attract attention to our biodiversity
and the disastrous disappearance of amphibians,
known and unknown.

PURE AMAZONIA

Pure Amazonia in the bookshops in Scandinavia

Pure Amazonia in the bookshops in Scandinavia

PURE AMAZONIA

Pure Amazonia is a prelude to the two-volume publication, “Battle for Life”, a profound and moving retrospective of Sterkendries’s work in some of the planet’s most ecologically vulnerable areas, which is extensively illustrated with photos selected from twenty years of fieldwork.

PURE AMAZONIA

Pure Amazonia is a prelude to the two-volume publication, “Battle for Life”, a profound and moving retrospective of Sterkendries’s work in some of the planet’s most ecologically vulnerable areas, which is extensively illustrated with photos selected from twenty years of fieldwork.
See for yourself in “Pure Amazonia” how imagery combines to create an orchestral atmosphere, raising your awareness of biodiversity, letting you experience adventures in the forest canopy, witnessing the Natives and their traditional lifestyle, the encroaching colonisation in the Amazon by non-Indians and the visual impact of a rapidly changing and vanishing world that could also be considered the main cause of climate change.
“Pure Amazonia” is a hardcover photo book and the dimensions are 24 X 16.5 cm with 350 pages of full colour photos. The price is 30 euros. This does not include the cost of transportation.
“Pure Amazonia” was printed in Europe/Belgium, given that most of the copies are firstly sold in this region and in line with the motto Think Globally, Buy/Produce Locally.
The income from the book provides support for his ongoing book project, “Battle for Life”.
Sterkendries publishes now his own books under the name “Omentoké”, after a Huarani woman who died and with whom he had a unique relationship.

Pure Amazonia in the bookshops in Scandinavia

Pure Amazonia in the bookshops in Scandinavia

Pure Amazonia in the bookshops in Scandinavia

Pure Amazonia in the bookshops in Scandinavia

Pure Amazonia in the bookshops in Scandinavia

Battle for life

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Battle for life

Guido’s mission and the title of his book, which is also his life’s work, provides an innovative answer to misinformation or in any event to the suppression of information about ecology and economy in our society. Today’s society relentlessly pushes us to live life in the fast lane. In response to this the photographer Guido Sterkendries has developed an alternate vision.

Battle for life

Guido’s mission and the title of his book, which is also his life’s work, provides an innovative answer to misinformation or in any event to the suppression of information about ecology and economy in our society.
Today’s society relentlessly pushes us to live life in the fast lane. In response to this the photographer Guido Sterkendries has developed an alternate vision.
He is accustomed to working in extreme habitats, having spent most of his life exploring and discovering the unknown and the people who live there. Sterkendries focuses on threatened tribes and endangered life forms, opening a window on a world that many thought had vanished. The few remaining Amazon Indians are facing extinction today. This book reflects the vision of a travelling photographer but also holds out a beacon of hope. There is still light in the darkness. As you examine his work you feel that there is nothing quite as miraculous as our planet. Sterkendries has something in common with many naturalists, namely his ambition to putting endangered forms of life and sometimes whole regions into the limelight. In taking on this ecological mission, his aim is not to ridicule economic progress but to expose what will happen if we leave it to develop unchecked. What will the world look like when our children have grown up? People from different origins arouse his curiosity and always lead him to conclude that if we are prepared to enter someone else’s world, then differences will fade away. By building bridges, we can create a future, a world with less injustice and more understanding. But there is nothing quite as miraculous as our planet. He exhibits the photos of his unique journeys and hopes that his life’s work will leave its mark, helping to bridge the gap between modern-day man and the natural world. He shares his passion for capturing exotic, unique and authentic beauty with the rest of the world in this wonderful book. Twenty-three years of fieldwork will come together in this amazing publication, a statement, a must-have in the making.

About

As an author whose vision has been formed during the last thirty years of my life, I have chosen to communicate this vision in a language that I trust many on this planet will understand.

About

As an author whose vision has been formed during the last thirty years of my life, I have chosen to communicate this vision in a language that I trust many on this planet will understand.
The choice to independently publish “Battle for Life” – including publishing it myself (name of the publisher’s: OMENTOKE), was not the easiest one in the short term. However, from a creative point of view, it was decidedly the most rewarding choice, primarily because of my deep sense of the value of life. I did not, therefore, allow any economic, political or religious influences to cloud my vision and thus, as it appears in “Battle for Life”, my vision is represented as purely as possible.
During my travels in the past 25 years, most of my supporters have asked me to do my own thing, in my own way and I have always tried to be loyal to this objective – in combination, of course, with my basic underlying passion for all living creatures. In my work I hope to achieve much more than merely saying “I saw it with my own eyes and I raised my camera each time so that what I saw could enrich my vision to pass it on to others”; I am adding up my experiences one by one, in order to create one big whole which I hope will help complete the puzzle of our complex eco-system and its interactions.
In order to remain aware of what I consider a “complete and unrestricted version” of what is necessarily a limited catalogue, I have tried to mirror myself. However, I was born in a part of the world where the strength of the economy creates a much higher level than that of ecology as a whole. Living near the gigantic port of Antwerp I estimate that only 5% of the 33-km economic radius around it consists of nature as it always has. The wildlife, including the migratory birds, are suffering because of the industry but the quality of the air that all living creatures have to breath in is also far from pleasant or healthy. The best farmland is now forever lost and most cultural aspects of our own history have been flooded by polluted water over the past five decades. In the name of so-called “progress” I saw and felt, along with some of my contemporaries, that many parts of the world are changing irreversibly and too fast. Sitting back and doing nothing while our ecological basis of life deteriorates exponentially just isn’t my style. I felt motivated to do something, to help find solutions that can benefit this generation, and all those that come after it. But at the same time I had to stay true to my roots and the urban lifestyle that had been mine since childhood. This enabled me to recount my journeys with a sense of reality, overlaid with adventures and magic. Since childhood I have always been attracted to the rich diversity of the tropics and especially the fast evolving life forms of Amazonia. Seeing amphibians floating in 'Rivierenhof Park' with my own eyes while days before I had admire their mating rituals and their spectacular behaviour in the Amazon, I was shocked and concerned that this destructive polluting process could also harm the richest eco-system on Earth. The Amazon and its inhabitants are truly magical and through my work I have tried to represent this, as proof that this eco-system is one of the richest on earth and requires global protection. And I am not the only one – most people in the world agree with this conclusion, and so we all have a powerful reason to protect our planet’s most natural purification asset.
My book does not aim to point the finger at anyone in particular, unless we consider it absolutely necessary. At times it goes straight to the heart of the agro-industry and the pharmaceutical industry. But, working with others, I have tried to suggest solutions and alternatives with specialists, so that we can all have a clear idea of what is really going on in our world. This world, this globe is so unique, thanks to its different climate zones and geography – but nowadays they are changing so fast that global warming is the result. All the life forms have adapted to one or more climate zones and are quite capable of continuing to adapt and evolve in response to change. But it is the seemingly uncontrollable speed of global warming that means that most of the life forms on earth are under serious threat – with some even vanishing before anybody ever knew of their existence.
My objective was to document the wonders of our world, through my many photographs of extremely endangered areas, animals and natives.

Practical information

The release of this voluminous book was previously scheduled on this website for November 2010. This date has been postponed until further notice as more field work was added in recent years which Guido felt had to be included in Battle for Life in light of the terrible developments that he wishes to expose (among other the failing protection of Kanamari by Funai and the consequences thereof). Guido is currently trying to put his field work in the Amazon on hold to complete “Battle for Life” but obviously he has a lasting connection with the region through his contacts and is ready to leave at the drop of a hat if this is necessary.

Practical information

The release of this voluminous book was previously scheduled on this website for November 2010. This date has been postponed until further notice as more field work was added in recent years which Guido felt had to be included in Battle for Life in light of the terrible developments that he wishes to expose (among other the failing protection of Kanamari by Funai and the consequences thereof). Guido is currently trying to put his field work in the Amazon on hold to complete “Battle for Life” but obviously he has a lasting connection with the region through his contacts and is ready to leave at the drop of a hat if this is necessary.
In the meantime he continues to raise the awareness of people all over the world with the international distribution of his book “Pure Amazonia”, through exhibitions, articles and lectures.
Besides this he co-exists with his surroundings, both physically and in spirit, in ways that are more in harmony with nature, in keeping with a lifestyle about which our ancestors gathered knowledge for centuries and which he wants to recall. He applies this on a daily basis in his attention to his family, his ecological berry and vegetable garden, which is teeming with biodiversity and which is not treated with pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. He also raises his own chickens, for eggs and for their meat, without antibiotics or soy. He focuses on increasing local production, consumption and appreciating human relationships. In the past people gathered food, now they gather money. Mankind is becoming dependent while all the knowledge is lost and the crises succeed each other. Even though it is possible to do things differently.
In today’s tough as nails society Guido proposes inspiring stories and photos, following his confrontation with people’s quest for the meaning of life.

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People who are interested in the book can leave their contact details on this website, without paying for it beforehand. You will be personally notified of the release, which will definitely take place.

Subscribe

In the past you could subscribe for the book and pay beforehand. Those who chose to do this will be the first to be notified of the new release date and will be exclusively presented with their copy as thanks for their belief in the project.
People who are interested in the book can leave their contact details on this website, without paying for it beforehand. You will be personally notified of the release, which will definitely take place. The power games with former publishers and early supporters whose philosophy did not mesh with the philosophy of Battle for Life have now ended and the book is in its final stages. Guido never could have surmised that such a vision, based on a knowledge of nature and harmony, would uniformly be adopted in a society that is a combination of fragmented interests. But if you believe in change, your faith will be rewarded.

Pictures / Framed Photo Art

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